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By The Numbers: Devils 7, Panthers 2

by
Staff Writer
/ Florida Panthers

Panthers By The Numbers takes a closer look at some of the

interesting stats that you may or may have not known about.

Devils 7, Panthers 2

5 – It was a rough game for the Panthers as the Devils scored five times before the Cats found the back of the net. You knew it would be tough as the first goal came off the stick of Zach Parise just 1:18 into the contest. He scored again with 3:07 in the first to give New Jersey a 2-0 lead heading into intermission. They would then get goals from Brendan Shanahan, Travis Zajac and Brian Rolston in the first 16:20 of the second period.

11 – Ville Peltonen scored to finally get the Cats on the board with 1:30 left in the middle period as his shot from the right face-off circle beat Martin Brodeur for his 10th of the season. For the Panthers, Peltonen is the 11th skater to have to record at least 10 goals on the season which is the most in the league. The total is one more than the Toronto Maple Leafs and 2 more skaters than Detroit, Boston, Calgary and Chicago.

50 – With his goal Saturday, Peltonen reached a pretty nice plateau, registering his 50th goal of his career. It took him 363 games to accomplish the feat.

100 – Being a defensive defenseman, Jassen Cullimore doesn’t get to see his name on the scoresheet very often. Entering Saturday’s game, he had seven points (goal, 6 assists) on the season. But he also reached a milestone Saturday. Playing in his 14th season and his 756th game, Cullimore picked up his 100th point (25 goals, 75 assists) when he set up Peltonen with the second period goal.

32 – With the score getting out of hand midway through the second period, gloves were dropped quickly. There were two fights in a span of 32 seconds as Anthony Stewart squared off against Bryce Salvador 11:56 in and Nick Tarnasky fought Dan Clarkson at the 12:28 mark.

6 – In a day where nothing seemed to go right for the Panthers, the trio of Peltonen, Radek Dvorak and Gregory Campbell was one of the few bright spots. The CPR line as they are known by finished a plus-6 as they were on the line for both Panthers goals and no Devils goals.

80 – Another bright spot for the Cats was Stephen Weiss in the face-off circle. The center won 80% of his draws in the game (8 out of 10), including 2 of 3 in the offensive and neutral zones and a perfect 4 for 4 in the defensive zone.

14 – Two teams duking it out for a full 60 minutes, it’s quite astonishing to see that there was a total of 14 hits dished out. Each team had seven hits a piece. Nick Tarnasky had two hits to lead Florida while Colin White and Andy Greene had two each to lead the Devils.

19:35 – Jay Bouwmeester is the Panthers iron man, playing upwards of 30 minutes a game. Against the Devils, he was well under his 27:08 average of ice time, only skating for 19:35 on 23 shifts. It was his first time under the 20 minute mark this season. The previous low? 21:25 or almost two minutes more than today’s game. That was against Boston two games ago.

27 – Beating Brodeur with 5:14 left in the game, Bryan McCabe netted his 11th of the season. More importantly, it was the Panthers first score from the backend in 12 games. Including Peltonen's goal today, the forwards had scored the last 27 straight for the Panthers. McCabe, ironically, was the last defenseman to score when his blast just beat Vesa Toskala in overtime on February 3rd.

29 – What’s that old hockey adage? If you don’t shoot the puck, you can’t win? The Cats proved that wrong on Thursday as they beat the Rangers despite being outshot by 19 (41-22). But being outshot by 29 was just a little too much for Florida. New Jersey peppered Craig Anderson with 46 shots in the game while Florida only had 17 on Brodeur. The Devils had 17 in the second period alone. In fact, the Panthers 17 shots were just one more than their total penalty minutes in the game.

3 – Picking up the second assist on both Panthers goals, Dvorak registered his third two-assist game this season. He also had two assists against Atlanta on January 10th and November 30th against the New York Rangers.